Essays on trans, intersex, cis and other persons and topics from a trans perspective.......All human life is here.

This site is the most comprehensive on the web devoted to trans history and biography. Well over 1400 persons worthy of note, both famous and obscure, are discussed in detail, and many more are mentioned in passing.)

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31 October 2014

Roy Shelton grew up Jewish in Flushing, New York. He trained as s doctor at the Georgetown University School of Medicine on a US Army scholarship. He married Alison Berkowitz in 1981 and changed his name to Roy Berkowitz-Shelton. He served with the US Army in Germany until 1987, and he told Alison about his desire to crossdress, but he repressed it.

They had a son in 1985, and a daughter in 1988. Bershel opened a general medical practice in Newton, Boston, and Alison became his office manager.

Not until 2004 did Bershel tell Alison that he felt that he was a woman, Deborah. Bershel started visiting a gender therapist who suggested that it be Deborah who attended the sessions. Bershel read and identified with She’s Not There by Jennifer Finney Boylan. Alison went with Deborah as female for a cross-dressers' weekend on Rhode Island.

Deborah started laser hair-removal and voice training. In 2006 she had facial surgery, sent letters to the patients, and set up a website. Most of the patients stayed, and the synagogue was accepting. Her parents were accepting, but Alison, after living with Deborah for a few months asked Deborah to move out. Their daughter stopped speaking to Deborah.

Deborah met and formed a new life partnership with Berni, lesbian and a psychiatric social worker. Deborah had genital surgery with Dr Pierre Brassard in Montréal in 2007, and Berni accompanied her. At that time she had three trans patients. That number later grew to about 50. Dr Bershel attended the WPATH meeting in Oslo in 2009, had testified at the Massachusetts State House re discrimination suffered by transsexuals, and in 2010 gave a presentation at the First Event Transgender Conference.

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About Zagria

I have a social science degree. I spent several years in the 70s doing Gay Lib counselling, and moved on to organizing trans groups. I was rejected by the Clarke Institute (now CAMH) in the mid 1980s, probably because I do not match either of their stereotypes, but was accepted by Russel Reid on our first meeting in late 1987, and had surgery from James Dalrymple some months later. I have mainly worked as an IT consultant. I have been with the same husband for 45 years.